Hong Kong, Hotel Furama, Friday, 1997-11-07 10:00 local (Z+8)
What do you call citizens of Hong Kong? Hong Kongers? Hong Kongians? I still haven't found out.
However, I have found out that Hong Kong Island is much different than Kowloon. What used to be The British Crown Colony of Hong Kong—and is now a Special Administrative Region of China—is primarily made of three parts. The island of Hong Kong, the Kowloon peninsula on the mainland, and the New Territories abutting Kowloon. The airport is in Kowloon, and although I have occasionally gone over to The Island, the local term for Hong Kong Island, we've always stayed in Kowloon. But now Tower is putting us up at the Hotel Furama on The Island. The hotel appears to have been one of the first high-rise hotels, and it's right in the middle of town. The government offices, Hong Kong Park, the ferry terminals, the central subway station, and the major financial buildings, all are within easy walking distance. CNN Asia is here as well as the Hang Seng, their currently-ailing stock market.
This is my third day here on this trip. The two fully enclosed days and part of a third are the time it takes Tower's lone freighter to make the round trip, Hong Kong to Khabarovsk to Anchorage to Chicago to JFK and return. It should be arriving any time now, and we're set to leave the hotel for the airport in an hour and one half. Space at Hong Kong's airport is severely limited. It will be unloaded and reloaded in about two hours. That's fast.
Anyway some miscellaneous observations about the trip and Hong Kong—The Island:
People dress formally here. Every time I have been out of my room I've been the least formally dressed (black jeans, polo shirt, sandals). Almost everyone on the street is in business attire, men in suits—not sports coats.
The place is very clean and very expensive. Shopping centers—whoops, centres, right?—have names like Armani Rubenstein. Car show rooms have Daimlers, Jaguars, Mercedes.
There are a lot of elevated, covered walkways. I hesitate to call them sidewalks; they're much wider—and fancier—than sidewalks. If you know your route, you can get from almost any major building downtown to another without having to descend to street level and without risking getting wet if it's raining. It's not raining; the weather has been beautiful with temps in the 70's and little humidity. It's actually pleasant to walk about this place. In Kowloon that's not true, at least for me.
Hong Kong has a thriving film industry, and movie attendance here is high. I went to a movie last night. Seats are reserved. You look at a little screen and tell the ticket seller what seat you want. He/she punches in the seat and its screen position is highlighted. You okay that and then your ticket is produced. American films have Chinese subtitles.
Literature in the hotel says that Hong Kong has the highest percapita cellular phone ownership in the world. I've seen the same written claim for Tel Aviv. Which one is highest I do not know, but it's obvious both are very high. If you're in a crowd—and you always are in public here—somebody is sure to be talking on their cell phone.
Traffic is heavy, but it flows well, thanks in large measure to those elevated walkways removing a lot of foot traffic from the streets. Though walking is pleasant, you are ingesting a lot of exhaust fumes.
Hong Kong Park is nice, but totally developed. There is grass, but it is roped off and no one is allowed on it. Where do young Hong Kongians go to make out at night? The benches in Hong Kong park or the Amphitheatre there. They seem oblivious to all the passing tourists.
Oh, yes, in the movie. You don't see the “coming attractions”, you are shown the “next change”.
The only meal I usually eat in the hotel is the breakfast since that's paid for by the company. All other meals I've eaten at small, Chinese restaurants. In every case, I've been the only round-eye in each place. I got a really rude waiter in one. I couldn't determine if he was being rude to everyone or just to me.
So much for Hong Kong and on to a couple of cleanup items. A few messages back I mentioned a captain and first officer that have been given 45 days off for having made a navigational error over the North Atlantic. I've found out that the captain has been handed an additional penalty of being demoted to a first officer for six months. It'll be payback time for him. He'll be having to fly with some new captains, guys whom he treated badly when they were flying as a first officer to him. Hopefully it'll make him a better captain when he returns to the left seat, but probably not.
The freighter got stuck for four days in Khabarovsk a couple of weeks back. It seems the airport had no fuel, and nobody bothered to inform incoming flights. Khabarovsk is the major international airport for Eastern Siberia. That they should be out of fuel is incredible, but it happened.
That possible fuel problem has caused Tower to begin using Chitose when fuel at Khabarovsk is questionable. The Japanese really don't like to see us come in there. You see, their ramps are clean—spotless—and our airplanes leak oil and hydraulic fluid. Japanese aircraft are never allowed to continue operation when a leak develops. Reminds me of when I used to fly for Evergreen. The Japanese called us Never Clean.
Okay, time to start cleaning up. I get really spread out all over the room when I'm this long in a place.
Everybody take care...Terry